


The Judge

by sirfeit



Series: go home, or make a home [7]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Cuties, Depressive Episode, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-10-26 02:34:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10777671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: After escaping from Polis, Emori takes care of Murphy.





	1. they are remembering

**Author's Note:**

> hey pals! welcome to: MURPHY IS A SOFT BOY: the novella  
> (not really a novella it’s like two chapters)

 They are deep into the woods when Emori says this:

“Did you finish the job?”

And he says. “What?”

So she slows down and she explains herself. “Your mentor, your _seingeda._ She treated you poorly, so I —“ a pause, a sly grin. “Took the blood that you couldn’t.”

He stops walking. “You — you fucked her up? For me?”

She laughs at him, at his surprise. He can feel his knees going weak. He stumbles off to the side of the road, has to sit down. “The Commander — the Commander told me it was her,” he says.

She’s next to him, one hand brushing away his hair, a comfort. “Oh, _pakstoka,_ is that why you were so loyal to her?” she asks. His hands are shaking. He nods, unable to speak. “I’m sorry,” she says, but he doesn’t understand what she is apologizing for.

“I don’t have to go back,” he tells her. “I don’t. Have to.”

She touches his face, and she says: “The only thing that matters is not putting you in a cage.” And then. “I thought you were dead, John. _”_

“Me too,” he says. “I thought I was dead too.”

—

When they leave Polis, there is still snow on the ground.Emori holes them up in a cave for awhile. “Start a fire,” she says, and she smiles at him. “You’re good at that.”

Sure. He’s good at setting fires in space. But here? On wet ground? It’s okay. He went to Earth Skills like the rest of them. You build a grave, and the fire dies. You build a house, and the fire lives in it.

She lets him stay in the cave, while it’s still cold out. Brings him back dead animals, and he cooks them over the fire. Otherwise, he curls up in the pile of furs Emori gave him, and he sleeps.

And then. Later. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, really, other than he is sure that time has passed. She tells him to pack up the furs, and he does, and she leads him back into the forest, and the snow is melting. She takes him to a tree, and she presses his hand against it, her warmth against his, and he looks at her and says “What is it?”

And she says: “The trees are waking up. They’re remembering how to be trees again.”

Things seem to pass him by. He captures a rabbit, and then. Holds it in his hands, trembling heart beating, the rabbit frozen underneath his fingers. It’s. So small.

Emori finds him like that, frozen around it, and sends him to wash up by the stream. They have berries for dinner that night, fresh and cool. They taste familiar going down his throat, and when he sleeps he dreams of nothing, but in the morning it’s hard for Emori to wake him up again. They don’t eat those berries again.

Emori hunts. Emori hunts and he cleans the — he cleans them for her. The animals. He likes to eat, and he doesn’t mind them so much when they’re dead. But he can’t — You would think he would be numb to it. That he would have gotten used to it. But it’s worse, now.

Emori calls him a soft boy, all affectionate, and makes him a set of knives. “Not for killing,” she says, placing them in his hands, curling his numb fingers around them. “For cooking. You like doing that, right?"

Yes. Yes. He likes finding out what makes Emori happy, what makes the meat tender, how to mix different ingredients against each other. He likes seeing Emori smile. Likes hearing her moan of pleasure when she tastes it, likes being able to make her feel that way without ever having to touch her. His filthy fingers against her clear skin.

It had always been — It had always been, that. They were both flawed, and bad, and wrong, but now. It’s worse. He’s worse. She’s better. She cradles his head in her hands and he is forced to admit that he is broken. That Polis did break him, in the end, after all.

And yet. Yet. She seems to be putting him back together.


	2. leah: the less-pretty sister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so nadia hilker and luisa d’olivera don’t actually look that much alike but i did not know that when i started writing this plotline
> 
> also, R.I.P luna

As the snow melts into spring, Emori takes him to the edge of the world, to the water. They get on her boat, and it’s like it was ages ago except now he can tie decent knots and he always remembers to cut the boat loose from the dock. And they lay out on the back and they look up at the stars and they dream together, in sleep and in wakefulness. And then, one night, they dock at a big container on legs, something Emori calls an Oil Rig, and Emori stalks to the door and she says something in Trig and then again, in English: “I am Emori and I seek safe passage. I have one guest, Jonnmofi of Polis. We bring tech and our skills.”

The door is opened. “Luna,” says Emori, stiff.

“Emori,” says Luna? back, equally as awkward. “Your guest?”

“Murphy,” he says, stepping forward.

“From Polis?” she asks.

“From Skaikru,” he corrects.

She laughs at him. “What’s the color of your blood?” she asks, and???? What kind of greeting is that?

“Red,” answers Emori for him. “He’s no threat to you, Luna.”

“Then enter,” she says, and they are inside.

 

—

 

They trade their tech — some kind of huge air-conditioner thing and a collection of cords and the grids that make up computers but look like tiny cities — for preserved meat, for new canteens, for repaired clothes. Lastly, Luna hands him a bottle of something that is neon orange and bubbles. Murphy tries to watch how Emori drinks hers, but Luna doesn’t hand her anything, so — it tickles his nose going down and he coughs. It tastes like a summer day when you can hardly look at the sun for how bright it is. Emori gives him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. He expects them to get back onto their boat and go anywhere else, but Luna leads them further into the container, the Rig. “How long are you staying?” she asks them.

Emori’s eyes glitter. “As long as you’ll have us,” she says.

Something’s very wrong between the two of them. Something — very bad. “We’ll see,” says Luna. It sounds more foreboding than she means it to, probably.

Luna gives them a room with one big mattress filled with aching springs and two blankets. Emori frowns, and removes the furs from their bags, makes a little nest for Murphy, like she always did in the cave. He wants to sleep with her cuddled into him, but he’s holding the orange drink now and it’s the middle of the day. He offers it to her, but she shakes her head and just says “It’s yours.”

 

—

 

Floukru is okay. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the little things; there’s consistent food and he doesn’t have to do a lot of work: Luna teaches him how to fish along with the smallest kids, casting out nets into the sea. She’s patient, and kind, and her touch is gentle and her smile is sweet. Floukru is good. He could imagine — He could imagine staying here.

Except. Except. There’s always a catch, isn’t there? There’s one girl, who fishes with them, Leah, and Luna is always harsh with her: harsh words, harsh hands. Nobody does anything to stop it, and Murphy — Murphy keeps his thoughts to himself.

Emori and Luna, too; interacting, it’s clear that Luna doesn’t — like Emori, which doesn’t make sense, because they _look_ so similar. Luna doesn’t have the face tattoo that Emori has, but: their eyes are the same. Their blood is the same dark color.

He asks Emori about Leah before bed one night, and Emori sets down her sewing, and she says “Leah is the only one of Luna’s children who has inherited what she sees as her biggest flaw, what made her kill our brother; her nightblood. Like me.”

“You’re not flawed,” he says before he even thinks about it. Says it instead of three words he could say instead, but — She knows. She already knows. He can tell by the quirk of her lips, the soft look she gives him. And she calls _him_ a soft boy.

“We stay here because it’s safe,” she tells him. “We get consistent food and it’s a safe place to sleep. Not because it’s nice.”

“She doesn’t like you,” Murphy says, feeling his words come up sharp in his throat. He touches her face, the edge of her tattoo, draws her into a kiss. The first they’ve shared since she met him at the market outside Polis.

Her mouth tastes sweet. “I love you,” he says aloud, admitting it; this weakness open up and laid bare before her.

“You’re not flawed,” she repeats back to him. “I love you.”

“I want to leave Floukru,” he tells her.

Her hands reach out for his; her callouses against his own. “Okay,” she says. “We can leave. But we might starve.”

He shrugs, feeling impossibly light, impossibly happy. “Who needs food when you have love?” and she laughs and she kisses him again.

And his body is his body is his body, lent out for no one, not Polis, not Skaikru, not Earth. And when Emori touches him with both her hands, he feels alive again, like the new spring, like the trees.

 

—

 

They are attacked the night they leave Floukru, in the woods, and Emori yells “Get behind me, John —“ and he can fight, he can fight! He has his knives, he has Emori’s knives! But then the other bandits are upon them, and his legs are kicked out from under him, and — _in Arkadia, after he had shot Harper, Bellamy’s weight bearing down on him —_

Emori takes care of them. Emori washes her face of dark blood, and smooths back his hair from his face. He cries more than she does. She holds him by the shoulders and comforts him. She rocks him back and forth, and she repeats: _I give myself to the miracle of the sea._ And then again, in Trigedasleng: _ai giv ai op gon nemiyon kom lanik-de._ It sounds like something Moss would say, but more than that, it reminds him of Luna. He takes deep breaths. He gets ahold of his breathing. He kisses her with tear-damp cheeks.

He is taking the telescope apart. He is remembering how to be himself again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally planned as Much Longer but i scrapped it and re-wrote it a bunch of times. also, here’s where you can stop reading if you’re done with murphy having adventures and want him to be happy and left alone. if not, i’ll see you on the other side in book 4! 
> 
> as always: your comments and kudos mean the world to me, even if you’re reading this a million zillion years later. thank you for reading. <3

**Author's Note:**

> writing memori makes me cry. please tell me about how it also made you cry, in your comments, kudos, or by talking to me on my tumblr, @icetastrophe. 
> 
>  
> 
> [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/22y434ouczazs3twidnkvgriy/playlist/7iPRKFAwgm0Fn8gZdpmiBB)


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